Eventually, we do stop; I hear the metallic, dull sound of the car door opening and closing, the muffled strains of a conversation, then an additional weight as two people get back into the car, one on either side. I have lost track of time – I don’t have my phone, and it feels as though I have been locked up for hours, though it might be much less. My mouth is dry, my fingernails bleeding. I have been trying to break the metal lock on the boot to no avail. When I close my eyes, I imagine water, cool and clear, flowing down my throat.
Tears fill my eyes as I hear Nate telling Grace how he feels about her; it has all been for nothing, then. All of it. The air in the boot feels like it is lessening; it is becoming harder and harder to breathe.
I hear him lie through his teeth about me, telling Grace he doesn’t know where I am, telling her that I am unstable. Anger builds in my chest as I realise in horror that he means to leave me in here, let me rot away to nothing – no one will know I was ever in here at all. And then I hear him tell her about my father, about how he gave him advice. Tears start to form in my eyes, they slide helplessly down my cheeks, puddle at my chin. Daddy didn’t want anyone else to love me. But he’s gone, and soon I will have lost Nate too.
Desperately, I gather all of my energy and try again, hitting the boot with my hands and my feet, despite the weakness that is overtaking my limbs, despite the ache in my joints that gets worse by the second.
The car stops. I can’t make out what they’re saying anymore; there is the sound of planes overhead, loud and unmistakable. And then I hear the noise – a terrible, guttural scream – Nate, my Nate, and I feel horror rising up through me – Grace, oh Grace, what have you done?
And then she is there, above me, blinking in the sunlight, and I open my eyes, slowly, as though I have been in a daze. She’s telling me that it’s over, that everything is going to be all right now, and I start to cry as I realise what she’s done, that my Nate, my beautiful Nate, has gone. My sobs become uncontrollable, and she reaches down to lift me up, hugging me to her body, my treacherous friend. I wrap my arms around her neck, bury my face in her hair, trying to think as quickly as I can, fighting the urge to squeeze her tighter and tighter until her throat closes up and her body goes limp.
She rubs my back with a small, firm hand, and we stand there in the blazing Botswana heat, the sun burning down on us, bleaching away the past. I cannot look at Nate, at his body in the front seat of the car, still and unseeing. It breaks my heart, splinters it to pieces.
I hold Grace’s hand as we stagger to the airport, make our way through the automatic doors like two survivors of a massacre.
There are voices and people, they envelop us all at once, and I know time is up. I have to get my story straight. One last hand left to play.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Three weeks later
London, England
Grace
Felicity and I sit together in the church. The morning sun is filtering softly through the stained glass; I watch as it dapples the pews. It’s so much weaker here than the sun in Botswana; milky white instead of burning fire. Before us, the two coffins stand side by side; Hannah’s has white flowers, Alice’s has yellow. Our hands are clasped together; in front of us, Tom and Chris sit white-faced. The baby, Max, is not here – too young to understand, too painful to endure. At the end of the service, a woman approaches Chris, puts her arms around him for what looks like a moment too long. They look closer than friends, and my mind snags on the image briefly, before pushing it aside. Tom doesn’t speak, he is silent with shock. Perhaps he is only just realising what he has lost, and what he took for granted.
Afterwards at the wake, I hug their parents, press my cheek against theirs. They are cold, stiff, numb with grief. Felicity follows suit; I watch as she kisses Alice’s father, puts a reassuring hand against Hannah’s mother’s back. She is dressed beautifully; a black shawl over her slim shoulders. Despite everything that has happened, she still has the power to make me feel inferior, less than. My own jacket is shabby, a little bit too big.
Seeing me watching her, she comes over to me, watery-eyed. I open my arms, feel her familiar body angle against mine, breathe in the scent of her hair. It is just the two of us now, together with our memories.
‘Let’s go for a drink,’ she says softly, ‘somewhere quiet, just the two of us. We can toast them both.’
I nod, take a deep breath. The last few weeks have been exhausting – the police interviews about Nate, relaying everything that happened out in Botswana. Felicity has been a rock throughout, despite what she went through herself, the horror of it, and the truth about her father, what he did to her growing up. I have told her how sorry I am for never daring to question it – the suspicions we all had. They will not charge me for Nate’s death – it is marked down as self-defence. He is found guilty of both the girls’ murders, their parents will not have to sit through a trial. Out of it all, I realise, has come forgiveness, and understanding – Nate was found guilty of my rape posthumously, and finally, finally, I feel a sense of peace. The gap in our lives where Hannah and Alice once were will never be filled, of course, but at least there is a sense of justice having been done.
We leave the wake together, arm in arm, our footsteps the only sound in the quiet lane. It is April, now, the hedgerows are becoming cloudy with cow parsley, white fronds like broccoli stretching upwards to the sky. A butterfly flits in front of us; a Red Admiral, its wings fluttering rapidly before it disappears out of sight. Felicity squeezes me to her, warm and tight.
‘We’re the only ones left now,’ she says. ‘We have to look after each other.’
‘Of course,’ I say. ‘That’s what friends are for.’
She smiles, her golden hair glowing in the sunlight. ‘I’ll buy you a drink,’ she says.
And I follow her into the pub.
Acknowledgements
I wrote most of The Wild Girls in the 2020 lockdown. This year has been an incredibly hard one for so many people, but writing has provided a huge source of comfort to me and I feel very grateful to have been able to write this book – during a time when the world felt (and still feels) very scary, it was a privilege to be able to escape into Botswana, if only in my imagination. So, thank you to everyone at my publisher HQ for allowing me to write this and giving me the security of a book contract.
Thank you to my new editor Kate Mills for helping to shape this book, for having so much enthusiasm about it from the beginning, and for making it such an easy and collaborative process. Thanks to Charlotte Phillips at HQ for designing such a fabulous cover, and to everybody at HarperCollins both in the UK and abroad for their support. Particular thanks to Becky Heeley for all of your help, to Jon Appleton for your copy-edits, and to my Dad for pulling me up on my grammar and dubious geography, some of which is still dubious but I had to take artistic licence! Thank you as ever to Camilla Bolton, Jade Kavanagh, Mary Darby and all at Darley Anderson for your energy, kindness and belief and for selling my books around the world.
Thank you to Alex for putting up with me during lockdown and letting us get kittens (got to get Sooty and Smudge in here somehow!) and thank you to my amazing family for always championing my novels.
And as always thank you to my readers; I found an old draft of The Doll House (my debut) the other day and I really can’t believe I’m now on book four. Every week I get messages from people telling me they’ve enjoyed my books and it makes my day every time. If you want to get in touch with me, please do so on www.phoebemorganauthor.com, or find me on Twitter @Phoebe_A_Morgan, Instagram @phoebeannmorgan, or Facebook @PhoebeMorganAuthor. Thank you for buying my books, for reading and reviewing them, and for telling others about them too – it really helps and makes all the pain of the first draft worth it!
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